Bali and the Gilis In My Mouth

This fish, called Gourami, was on lots of menus 
in Bali but we had never heard of it before. 
It was a dead good white fish.

One thing we were very impressed with was 
how well our food was always presented. 
Here is a beautiful tower of roast veggies 
with mozzarella - it looks good enough to eat!

Cap cay - a Chinese influenced Indonesian dish of stir fried 
vegetables and meat. Simple, and tasty.

Ok fine, we ate a lot of "western" food! 
But it had been so long since we'd seen a 
Mexican restaurant and I had wanted to go 
for my birthday! Anyway, mega tasty burrito!

I can't remember the name of this dish but it was a tuna
steak covered with a delicious, spicy tomato and red 
pepper sauce, served with sticky red rice and crispy onions.

Tuna again, this time topped with Indonesian style sambal. 
This is basically raw onion, tomato, chilli, garlic and lemon 
grass all smashed together with lime juice. Yum.

This vegetable kept popping up everywhere. It's some kind of
spinach-like leaf, possibly called morning glory. It's tasty and
we've had it all over Asia, this is just our first photo of it.

One of the best things we've eaten so far. It's a fish called Mahi-mahi, 
and it's a very light, mild white fish that came as a huge barbecued 
steak with sauce. I wish I could eat this every day!

Dave says that these shrimps were amazing. Seven huge
ones for £2.50, barbecued to crustacean perfection.

The last two dishes were bought on
the beach in Sanur at "Jack Fish".
Very cheap and amazing food.
The young waiter is also hilarious.
Check it out.

A new fruit! This is called snake fruit, and I'm sure you
can see why (hint: look at the skin!). It was very firm on
the outside, but once peeled, the fruit was similar to
lychee in texture, but tasted a bit like pineapple. Odd.

This was a special kind of curry with tofu and something
called tempe - it's made from whole soy-beans and is a
meat substitute that had a firm texture and a mild flavour.
They curry itself was dead good - coco-nutty and creamy.

Gado-gado - an Indonesian tradition. Simply put, it's steamed
vegetables covered in peanut sauce. It's really rich and the
sauce is much more like peanut butter than any other
we've encountered thus far. Good, but not brilliant.

Sword fish! Dave loves it and I'd never had it before so we
decided to treat ourselves to it. Yum! It's very similar to
tuna, but with a milder flavour. It was barbecued but there
wasn't much seasoning on it, which was a shame as it
was our most expensive meal on the trip so far!

We also decided to try the red snapper. This was really
creamy and moist, but also a bit lacking in seasoning.
Both were lovely bits of fish though.

Coming next are a couple of really traditional Indonesian dishes that we tried. The first is called "baba guling" and apparently a restaurant in Kuta was made famous for it by an American TV chef, who went there and raved about it. We decided to be a bit different and hunted down a place in Sanur that sold it. Baba guling is traditionally served at special ceremonies, although now eaten all year round, and is, essentially, a whole roast sucking pig. Due to the labour intensive cooking process, the small restaurants that serve it tend to stop cooking once they open and sell out within a couple of hours, so we had to be on the ball to catch this place open!

Here is the kitchen, outside the restaurant. This woman
is preparing the sausages that are made from parts of the
sucking pig. The meat is used to make all sorts of dishes.

And here is one portion of baba guling. On the right is a spicy, rich, pork 
and lemon grass soup. On the plate is satay, crackling, sausage, skin, 
meat on the bone, crispy skin, standard meat and probably some other 
stuff I've forgotten. It was a huge amount of food and honestly, 
not all of it was that great but it was definitely worth it for the best bits 
(the sausages and soup) and this whole lot, plus rice, only cost £1.70.

If you're in Sanur and want to go, just ask a bemo 
or taxi driver to take you to "Warung Babi Guling".
It's opposite McDonalds, just cross the road so
keep an eye out for this sign. It opens at 11am so 
be sure to get there early, or they might sell out!

Another classic that we tried was the spice-stuffed crispy roast duck. In texture, it was very similar to the crispy duck we get from the Chinese at home, and the spices it's cooked with weren't that powerful in flavour. However, when we dipped the juicy meat into one of the 3 sauces (or a combo of them all) it became a different dish entirely. Pricey, but fantastic!

Here you can see the duck, with 3 different sauces: 
sambal, a spicy tomato based paste, and a pot of chilli sauce 
that tasted a bit too shrimpy for my liking. Then there are 
some veggies, potatoes, watermelon and those 
annoyingly deceptive green oranges!

And now for some fun...

Dragon fruit shake! I always thought
dragon fruits were white inside, but
they can be fuchsia pink too!

This one's for you Catherine! A new
flavour of Walkers. Sometimes we
got a really salmony one, which was
a bit weird, but generally, not bad.

To answer the question you are undoubtedly
screaming at your computer screens...
yes, it tasted just like normal Pepsi.